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Osakabe Tazaki
Osakabehime (刑部姫) is a figure in Japanese folklore. She is described as a yōkai inhabiting Himeji Castle. A Kabuki play based on her story is considered one of the Shin-Kabuki Jūhachiban. Legend Osakabehime lives in the castle tower of Himeji Castle, and meets the castle lord only once a year to tell him the fate of the castle. According to Matsuura Shizuyama's essay ''Kasshi Yawa'', the reason why Osakabehime lives in hiding like this is because she hates people. The true identity of Osakabehime is generally considered to be an old kitsune, or an unrighteous child born by Princess Inoe to his son Osabe-shinno, There are also theories such as the claim she is the spirit of the courtesan that Emperor Fushimi loved or Osakabe Okami, the god of Mt Hime, where Himeji Castle is located. Gender of this yōkai was not clearly determined in ''Shokokuhyakumonogatari'' (appeared in various forms including men and women), but eventually they came to be considered a woman. It is b ...
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Toriyama Sekien
200px, A Mikoshi-nyūdō, specifically a Miage-nyūdō, as portrayed by Toriyama">Miage-nyūdō.html" ;"title="Mikoshi-nyūdō, specifically a Miage-nyūdō">Mikoshi-nyūdō, specifically a Miage-nyūdō, as portrayed by Toriyama , real name Sano Toyofusa, was an 18th-century scholar, ''kyōka'' poet, and ''ukiyo-e'' artist of Japanese folklore. Born to a family of high-ranking servants to the Tokugawa shogunate, he was trained by Kanō school artists Kanō Gyokuen and Kanō Chikanobu, although he was never officially recognized as a Kanō school painter. Art career After retiring from service to the shogunate, he became a teacher to numerous apprentices in poetry and painting. He was among the first to apply Kanō techniques to ''ukiyo-e'' printmaking, inventing key new techniques along the way, such as ''fuki-bokashi'', which allowed for replicating color gradations. Most famously, he was the teacher of Kitagawa Utamaro and Utagawa Toyoharu. Sekien is best known for his mass-pro ...
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Kyōka Izumi
, real name , was a Japanese people, Japanese author of novels, short stories, and kabuki plays who was active during the Empire of Japan, prewar period. Kyōka's writing differed greatly from that of the naturalist writers who dominated the literary scene at the time. Many of Kyōka's works are surrealist critiques of society. He is best known for a characteristic brand of Romanticism preferring tales of the supernatural heavily influenced by works of the earlier Edo period in Japanese art#Art of the Edo period, Japanese arts and Japanese literature, letters, which he tempered with his own personal vision of aesthetics and art in the modern age. He is also considered one of the supreme stylists in modern Japanese literature, and the difficulty and richness of his prose has been frequently noted by fellow authors and critics. Like Natsume Sōseki and other Japanese authors with pen names, Kyōka is usually known by his pen name rather than his real given name. Life Before Toky ...
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Mutsu Province
was an old province of Japan in the area of Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori Prefectures and the municipalities of Kazuno and Kosaka in Akita Prefecture. Mutsu Province is also known as or . The term is often used to refer to the combined area of Mutsu and the neighboring province Dewa, which together make up the entire Tōhoku region. History Invasion by the Kinai government Mutsu, on northern Honshū, was one of the last provinces to be formed as land was taken from the indigenous Emishi, and became the largest as it expanded northward. The ancient regional capital of the Kinai government was Tagajō in present-day Miyagi Prefecture. * 709 ('' Wadō 2, 3rd month''), an uprising against governmental authority took place in Mutsu and in nearby Echigo Province. Troops were dispatched to subdue the revolt. * 712 (''Wadō 5''), Mutsu was separated from Dewa Province. Empress Genmei's ''Daijō-kan'' made cadastral changes in the provincial map of the Nara period ...
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Ihara Saikaku
was a Japanese poet and creator of the " floating world" genre of Japanese prose (''ukiyo-zōshi''). Born as Hirayama Tōgo (平山藤五), the son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku and later studied under Nishiyama Sōin of the Danrin school of poetry, which emphasized comic linked verse. Scholars have described numerous extraordinary feats of solo haikai composition at one sitting; most famously, over the course of a single day and night in 1677, Saikaku is reported to have composed at least 16,000 haikai stanzas, with some sources placing the number at over 23,500 stanzas. Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial and amorous affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class, whose tastes of entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts. Biography Ihara Saikaku was born in 1642 into a well-off merchant family in Osa ...
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Kabuto
' (兜, 冑) is a type of helmet first used by ancient Japanese warriors which, in later periods, became an important part of the traditional Japanese armour worn by the samurai class and their retainers in feudal Japan. Note that in the Japanese language, the word is an appellative, not a type description, and can refer to any combat helmet. History Japanese helmets dating from the fifth century have been found in excavated tombs. Called (visor-attached helmet), the style of these kabuto came from China and Korea and they had a pronounced central ridge. , which is now known as a samurai helmet, first appeared in the 10th century Heian period with the appearance of ''ō-yoroi''. Until the early Muromachi period, were made by combining dozens of thin iron plates. Generally, only daimyo and samurai at the rank of commander wore ornaments called , which were shaped like a pair of hoes. In the middle of the Muromachi period, as the number of large-scale group battles increas ...
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Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki
is the second book of Japanese artist Toriyama Sekien's famous ''Gazu Hyakki Yagyō'' tetralogy, published c. 1779. A version of the tetralogy translated and annotated in English was published in 2016. These books are supernatural bestiaries, collections of ghosts, spirits, spooks, and monsters, many of which Toriyama based on literature, folklore, other artwork. These works have had a profound influence on subsequent ''yōkai'' imagery in Japan. ''Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki'' is preceded in the series by ''Gazu Hyakki Yagyō'', and succeeded by ''Konjaku Hyakki Shūi'' and ''Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro''. List of creatures The three volumes were titled 雨, 晦, and 明. From this book, Toriyama added captions. First Volume – 雨 (Rain) Image:SekienOmagatoki.jpg, Image:SekienOni.jpg, Image:SekienSansei.jpg, Image:SekienHiderigami.jpg, Image:SekienSuiko.jpg, Image:SekienSatori.jpg, Image:SekienShuten-doji.jpg, Image:SekienHashihime.jpg, Image:SekienHannya.jpg, I ...
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Battle Of Sekigahara
The Battle of Sekigahara (Shinjitai: ; Kyūjitai: , Hepburn romanization: ''Sekigahara no Tatakai'') was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 (Keichō 5, 15th day of the 9th month) in what is now Gifu prefecture, Japan, at the end of the Sengoku period. This battle was fought by the forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu against a coalition of Toyotomi loyalist clans under Ishida Mitsunari, several of which defected before or during the battle, leading to a Tokugawa victory. The Battle of Sekigahara was the largest battle of Japanese feudal history and is often regarded as the most important. Toyotomi's defeat led to the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. Tokugawa Ieyasu took three more years to consolidate his position of power over the Toyotomi clan and the various ''daimyō'', but the Battle of Sekigahara is widely considered to be the unofficial beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan for another two and a half centuries until 1868. Background Toyotomi ...
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Japanese Folklore
Japanese folklore encompasses the informally learned folk traditions of Japan and the Japanese people as expressed in its oral traditions, customs, and material culture. In Japanese, the term is used to describe folklore. The academic study of folklore is known as . Folklorists also employ the term or to refer to the objects and arts they study. Folk religion Men dressed as namahage, wearing ogre-like masks and traditional straw capes (''mino'') make rounds of homes, in an annual ritual of the Oga Peninsula area of the Northeast region. These ogre-men masquerade as kami looking to instill fear in the children who are lazily idling around the fire. This is a particularly colorful example of folk practice still kept alive. A parallel custom is the secretive ritual of the Yaeyama Islands, Okinawa which does not allow itself to be photographed. Many, though increasingly fewer households maintain a kamidana or a small Shinto altar shelf. The Shinto version of the kitchen go ...
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Ikeda Terumasa
was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the early Edo period. His court title was '' Musashi no Kami''. Terumasa was also known by the nickname ''saigoku no shōgun'', or, "The ''Shōgun'' of Western Japan". Terumasa fought in many of the battles of the late Azuchi–Momoyama period, and due to his service at the Battle of Sekigahara, received a fief at Himeji. His childhood name was Araokojimaru (荒尾古新丸). He was the son of Ikeda Tsuneoki and brother of Ikeda Sen. Biography Terumasa was the 2nd son and heir of Ikeda Nobuteru, Terumasa held Ikejiri Castle (Mino Province) and joined his father in fighting for Hideyoshi in the Battle of Komaki and Nagakute 1584, he led troops at Nagakute, the battle in which his father was killed. In 1590, following the transfer of Tokugawa Ieyasu to the Kanto, Terumasa was established at Yoshida in Mikawa, a 152,000-''koku'' fief. In 1594 Terumasa married one of Tokugawa's daughters, and after Hideyoshi's death in 1598, the Ikeda drifted into Iey ...
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Toyotomi Hideyoshi
, otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Course of History, Viking Press 1988. p. 68. Hideyoshi rose from a peasant background as a Affinity (medieval), retainer of the prominent lord Oda Nobunaga to become one of the most powerful men in Japan. Hideyoshi succeeded Nobunaga after the Honnō-ji Incident in 1582 and continued Nobunaga's campaign to unite Japan that led to the closing of the Sengoku period. Hideyoshi became the ''de facto'' leader of Japan and acquired the prestigious positions of Daijō-daijin, Chancellor of the Realm and Sesshō and Kampaku, Imperial Regent by the mid-1580s. Hideyoshi launched the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592 to initial success, but eventual military stalemate damaged his prestige before his death in 1 ...
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